Can Death be Taught? Finding Meaning, Mortality, and Culture

Abstract

The question 'Can death be taught?' is a request for evidence on the possibility of teaching death from a Heideggerian perspective. The paper indicates that it appears unlikely to achieve the aim of death education, overcoming the fear of death, if it could not include one's own death, the utmost fear. In Heidegger's philosophy, it appears possible for human beings to consider their own death since death is no more than being-toward-death: the human being lives in a condition in which 'I am dying' from the birth. Besides, the carestructure of Dasein involves its being-ahead-of-itself, and the anticipating of death opens the possibility of being authentic. Therefore, death education can take up this issue, one's own death as the most fear. What remains to be questioned is, however, the difference in terms of fear and anxiety between what Heidegger tries to show and what death education tries to encourage pupils to overcome. In this respect we must, at first, differentiate being-toward-death from the concept of wellbeing. In Heidegger's analysis the meaning of death appears in human mortality and temporality as existential characteristics of Dasein.